Facebook News Feed Gets a Major Redesign, Camera Gets New Features

To make News Feed more conversational and easier to read and navigate, Facebook has made a few updates to its design, including the comment style and readability, the company said on Wednesday.

“We are always working to help people have more lively and expressive conversations on Facebook. Comments have become the way to have conversations about a post with other people,” Shali Nguyen, Product Design Manager, and Ryan Freitas, Design Director, wrote in a blog post.

“We have updated our comment style and made it easier to see which comments are direct replies to another person,” they added.

The company also updated the look and feel of News Feed, including increased colour contrast to make typography more legible, larger link previews for easy reading, updated icons and Like, Comment and Share buttons and circular profile pictures to show who is posting or commenting.

Facebook improved the navigation to create a more consistent experience by making it easier to see where a link will take you before clicking on it and whose post a user is commenting on, reacting to or reading while he /she is in the post. The company said these design updates would not affect Pages’ reach or referral traffic. The Trending News section is now widely available on mobile for Android and iPhone users in the US, reports The Verge.

Facebook separately announced it was rolling out new Facebook Camera features it had unveiled back in March, including the ability to go Live using the Facebook Camera – complete with creative effects. Other new features include the ability to great 2-second looping video GIFs, and the ability to create full-screen text posts.

Finally, the Messenger app’s intelligent assistant M can provide Spotify suggestions, specifically when the conversation revolves around music with phrases like “play some music” and like “listen to music”.